


walk backwards into hell

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Titanic Fusion, Angst, M/M, Mentions of War, Minor Character Death, RMS Titanic, ship wreck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23606803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: On an unexpectedly cold April night, all their dreams are shattered by an iceberg.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: Time After Time: A Roswell New Mexico Alternate Era AU Event, there will always be an us (in every world in every story)





	walk backwards into hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a1_kitkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a1_kitkat/gifts).



> Written for the [Time After Time Event](https://alterarnm.tumblr.com/) over a Tumblr, **Day 4: 1900s**.
> 
> Title from [this Tumblr post](https://captainlordauditor.tumblr.com/post/173065875718/some-iconic-dialogue-that-sounds-like-its-from-the). Beta'ed by [jocarthage](https://jocarthage.tumblr.com/).
> 
> When I first had this idea, I knew [stars-collide-for-alex-manes](https://stars-collide-for-alex-manes.tumblr.com/) had already written her wonderful piece [By the Light of the Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18498871/chapters/43836436), and she so graciously told me there weren't enough Titanic fics in this world. So I wrote mine. Thanks for being so generous, darling! Hope you enjoy it!

There’s a beauty in the landscape before his eyes, in the way the night sky is lit up with flames and stars, in the sounds coming out from different throats in different languages. They’ve been standing in the deck outside the first-class restaurant, staring at the sky while the world around them suddenly came to a halt, and they’ve been ignoring the signals. Michael just stands there, where the new chapter of his life had begun just a few days before, and looks on as mayhem unfolds.

He’s holding Alex’s hand in his, the golden band around Alex’s finger digging hard into Michael’s skin — a band much like Michael’s own, the rings they exchanged a lifetime ago — like a brand, like a promise of forever that they will probably never have. Michael knows the end of this, he understands that icebergs and ships don’t mesh well, and that there’s never enough safe boats for everyone present in a sinking White Star Line ship. And this ship’s on its way downward, if the speed with which the stern is rising is any indication. He should know — he’s the engineer who built part of the Titanic that’s now finding its way to the deepest abyss of the Atlantic Ocean. Michael had been swept away to fix some knick-knacks in the ship, some tiny details that would mask the damage but never repair it. He’d said that they needed to get to New York, but in the end it hadn’t been his decision to make.

And now he’s here, staring at a starry sky, wishing there could be a way for them to forget about the reality they’re trapped into — hoping that words and memories of a life that now seems so far away from them are enough to mask the panic rising in his chest.

He wonders if Alex is feeling the same, and when he speaks, Michael recognizes Alex’s deflection mechanisms in the way he drawls out the words.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Alex whispers, free hand gripping the rails viciously, as he stares into the night. Michael doesn’t know what’s going on through Alex’s mind right now, but he can guess — they’ve known each other for most of their lives, ever since Michael had been sent to live with his aunt Ann Evans and her family in the outskirts of a town in the middle of the desert. They’ve shared their secrets and reveled in their small victories. They found out what love was, so young they hadn’t even realized the true depths of their feelings, together, and together they fought for freedom and happiness in a fiery way that can only be associated with soldiers. 

“It is,” he agrees without actually knowing what he’s agreeing to, since the noise inside his head is matched with the shouts and the screams and the cries from outside. He can’t focus on anything that’s not the weight of Alex’s hand on his, grounding him to a soil that’s cracking open. “Have you ever seen so many stars?”

Alex smiles, shuffling his weight from one leg to another, and tightens his hold on Michael’s hand. “Just once, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t remember.” His voice is soft, a contrast against the havoc around them, but they’re leaning close to one another, and Michael can hear the words perfectly — the fond understanding of the little details that make them the people they currently are. 

“Have _I_?” Michael asks, surprised. He would remember ever having seen such a beautiful scene — the stars looking down onto them like they had all the time in the world — but the truth is, he can’t remember anything right now, his mind too focused on the present, on the chaos that’s threatening to catch up with them.

“It was a long time ago,” Alex explains, voice low, and somehow Michael can hear the whispers over the yells from the other passengers who are running around in circles trying to find a spot in a lifeboat, or a buoy, instead of stopping and enjoying the scene this April night is offering them. He’s too stunned by the immensity of what’s happening around them to actually react to it in a way that might ensure they both make it out of the ship alive. Right now, there’s nothing more important to him than the warmth of Alex’s words surrounding him. “We were alone for the first time in years, and you took me back into the Roswell desert, and you had this frayed plaid blanket and we just lay there, under the stars.”

Michael nods with a small smile, ignoring the noise surrounding them — cries mixing with the wrecking whirring of a ship disentangling from its very core. He remembers that night, now, the cool breeze of the desert brushing through his curls as he dared to intertwine his fingers to Alex’s for the first time in what felt like forever — although it had only been three years, five months, a week and four days, not that Michael had been keeping count — and he remembers the surge of happiness and hope that he felt when Alex had simply squeezed his hand with all the freedom that the solitude of the desert offered them. 

“I had just come back from training, remember? My father wanted me to pick up the family’s heirloom and become a good soldier. And you,” Alex chuckles, apparently unaware of the situation they’re currently in, trapped in a deck while the Titanic is breaking down at their feet. “And you said that it didn’t matter, whatever my father wanted me to be, because I would always be _yours_.”

Michael remembers clearly the light dancing in Alex’s eyes when he leaned in and stopped barely a breath away from Alex’s lips, asking silently for a permission he knew he would be granted, because if anything he knew — still knows — Alex inside and out. Their connection has always been there, helping him through every step of his own path to discover who he really is and what he’s capable of doing.

“There were so many stars,” Alex continues, pointing out at one particular spot in the middle of the sky, a star that’s shining brighter than the rest. “I tried to count them, you know.”

“Why would you do that?” Michael says, attempting to imbue his words with a playfulness that he doesn’t feel deep inside. 

“I wanted to tell you that number, I really did.” Alex sighs slowly, gripping the rails once again. “I wanted to let you know that my love was bigger than anything in the world, even than the number of stars in the sky.”

“You’re silly,” Michael repeats, squeezing Alex’s hand.

There’s a sudden silence quieting the noise, in the screams of the people trapped underneath them, and they both turn around to understand where it’s coming from. Michael takes in the rest of the expanse behind them. Now he can see the whole band that played during dinner for three nights, the musicians in their places with their instruments — a piano, three cellos, a bass and three violins — eyes closed and features determined as they play piece after piece, happy and sad, hopeful and dramatic, engulfing them in a dance Michael hasn’t thought of since the day he promised to take care of Alex forever, in the privacy the desert that watched them grow together gave them.

“Do you remember this song?” Alex asks, looking down at Michael with hopeful dark eyes. Michael knows he can’t deny him anything when he’s staring at him as though he can read Michael’s soul.

Sometimes it feels like that.

“It’s our song,” he whispers, marveled. “Do you remember, the first day I was back in Roswell, fresh off Albuquerque?” Michael hasn’t been able to shake the memory of that particular encounter — while he had been still young, still naïve, but hopeful and ready to take on the rest of his life. “You’d come back too, from the Boxer Rebellion in China. It was—Alex, it was everything I could have hoped for.”Michael will never forget the rush of happiness he felt when he had run into Alex standing nonchalantly in front of the post office, nor he will be able to dismiss the pain cutting through his heart when he realized Alex was missing much more than the youth they both had left behind. 

It hadn’t prevented him from dancing slowly to _Musetta’s Waltz_ with Alex in his arms, much much later that same night, when they both had been drunk on wine and love as though time and distance hadn’t meant anything.

And it hadn’t meant anything, in the end, when they both chose to move to Belfast so Michael could work on an inspiring project for a new ship that was going to be the best ship in the whole world — impossible to sink, bigger than any other, fancier than the rest of the cruises. They had been so blinded by their own love, by the promise of a future held in the vows they’d exchanged as though they were getting officially married, that Michael hadn’t wanted t see the signs telling him that this was meant to fail.

“May I have this dance?” Michael invites Alex, offering his hand while the mayhem around them only intensifies. People are running, the floor underneath their feet is shaking, but Alex takes Michael’s hand and steps into his personal space, braving the cold that’s finding its way between them. Michael’s hand sneaks around the waist of Alex’s jacket, black stained with white drops he can’t remember ever being there, sleeves rumpled around the cuffs. He smiles softly at the way Alex’s hand on his arm warms his whole body, spreading a fuzzy feeling throughout his system. Alex looks at him expectantly, ready to dance together in public for the first time.

Michael very well knows it might be the last.

He holds Alex tighter against himself, flushing their bodies together while he attempts to make this moment last forever. He’s trying to commit to memory every detail regarding the love of his life — the way he smells of sandalwood, how his laugh reverberates in every vacant space in Michael’s mind. Michael needs the reassurance that they’re going down together as he grapples against the fatality that’s hovering over them.

He holds on Alex’s hand as though it’s the only lifeline that can save them both.

They sway together, ignoring the shouts calling for them to move out of the way, until the ground threatens to open up beneath them and they’re forced apart by the trembling at their feet. There’s a river of people stomping through the restaurant and out into the deep pit of darkness surrounding the ship, and the crowd threatens to separate them when Michael has to let go of Alex’s hands. Michael instantly misses the warmth of those fingers he longs to feel for the rest of his life, but there’s nothing he can do now that they’re standing three feet apart and breathing heavily. In fact, Michael has to take an additional step back to avoid being run over by the masses. When he glances at Alex again — eyes drifting to the masses running wild for a second — he notices Alex is wincing, reaching out to his right leg like he’s in pain.

“Alex?” he asks, ready for Alex’s confident reassurance, but he doesn’t get what he wants. Alex doesn’t reply, he just stares back at him with a gleam in his eyes that belies whatever sound that comes out of Alex’s lips.

And it’s then that it hits Michael, the realization that they’re in danger — that Alex doesn’t have the advantage of being _whole_ even if Michael’s never treated him any different — and the pain that comes along the knowledge that their time on this Earth is limited now that Michael has come to understand, in no unmistakable terms, that the ship is sinking faster than even he thought it could.

Michael has to get Alex out of this sinking ship before he loses him forever.

He reaches out and grabs Alex’s hand in a death grip, hauling him off his feet and over his shoulder. Alex begins to complain, hitting Michael’s back with his fists playfully at first, and when he realizes Michael’s not slowing down, with rising panic. At some point, Michael stops feeling Alex’s blows in his back, but he doesn’t stop to check on Alex — the cold has crept upon them, and Michael knows how Alex’s joints suffer from the swings of the weather. He still hears Alex’s complaints, weaker by the second, and that only forces him to run faster.

“What are you doing? Guerin, what are you _doing_? Guerin? _Michael_!”

But he doesn’t relent, he just pushes forward, makes his way through the crowd in his haste to get Alex off the ship. He’s still careful not to stomp over anyone’s feet — he can see some frightened faces, dirty and stressed. He doesn’t recognize many of them, but they’re all coming from the stairs leading to the third-class floor. 

“Michael Guerin, let me go!” Alex screeches, although Michael can feel his voice withering a bit. “I didn’t survive a war on another continent to get back to you so you could manhandle me like this!”

He needs to save Alex, at least.

Alex, who Michael had finally found once again after a lifetime of suffering. Alex, who deserved the whole world even if Michael wasn’t deserving of him.

He needs to get Alex off the ship. He needs Alex to _live_.

With that in mind, he keeps rushing through the people congregating in the decks, until he’s made his way to the front row and there’s a whole ocean of darkness standing in front of him. The Titanic hasn’t started sinking at a fast pace yet, Michael knows he still has some time. He knows he can do it.

“Take me down, Michael!” Alex keeps crying out, but Michael’s not having any of it. He can feel Alex’s hands grow colder the longer they spend on the decks.

“I have a war hero here!” he claims, gripping the rails with the only hand he’s got free. The men standing in the lifeboats stare at him helplessly. 

“Sir, you just have to—”

“He’s Engineer Guerin,” one of the Titanic crew says, a tall man Michael has seen a couple of times around the Captain’s table at dinner. “He’s one of the men who built this ship.”

“There’s no time,” another voice rises at his left. “We need to untie this and get the hell out of here!”

A chorus of voices begins screaming, asking, pleading, begging for a place in that lifeboat. When Michael looks around, there’s not another boat still on board. Every single one of them — short in numbers but sturdy in fabrication — is already on the water. Michael knows this is his last chance to get Alex out of here alive.

“We deserve a place,” he says, hating himself for the words that are leaving his mouth. He’s never been one to step on any toes to get what he wanted — he’s always been the outcast, the lowlife — but right now he will plead whatever it takes to save Alex. 

“There’s only one spot,” the same crewman tells him apologetically while he stands in the middle of the boat. Michael can count up to four free spots, but the way people are sitting inside the boat makes it difficult to cram more people inside. The crowd is beginning to get antsy, he can sense it, so he has to act quickly.

“Take _him_ ,” he hisses, hopping Alex off his shoulder and shoving him into the boat that’s still tied to the deck. Michael groans and looks around for something to help him while he tries to keep Alex _inside_ the boat. His eyes catch the glimpse of a blade on Alex’s belt — he keeps one on him at all times — and he snatches it without asking for permission, taking Alex so much by surprise that he doesn’t even have time to react.

He doesn’t look at Alex until he’s cut off the rope keeping the boat stuck to the sinking ship.

And when he does, Michael can feel the change in Alex’s gaze. He’s sure Alex has been watching at him the whole time — he’s felt the way Alex’s eyes have born holes in the side of his face — but the way he’s looking at Michael now breaks his heart. He will never forget the look of betrayal Alex shoots him when Michael pushes him over the rail and into the last lifeboat before the ship breaks in two and the ocean swallows everyone who dares to still be on the decks.

He feels the ground giving in as he scrambles for support. He loses his grip on the railing, where he’s been attached ever since he let go of Alex’s hand. Michael can hear the wooden decking cracking, the sound of the water filling every space, and all of a sudden the deck where he’s been holding himself up begins to rise. Panicking, Michael dares to look behind him, and what he sees leaves him empty inside.

The Titanic is breaking in two, and the half Michael’s in is currently pivoting to reach a vertical position. Michael knows, with the confidence that his engineering studies give him, that the moment the ship reaches full mast angle, everyone on the surface will be doomed.

The water is already rising so fast, the force of the ocean hitting the only ship that’s been pretentious enough to be deemed _unsinkable_. Michael almost laughs at the thought.

He also knows that there’s no time to find a safe haven. There’s no such thing any longer. The only thing he can do now is to find a new railing to hold onto for dear life and pray that the sinking ship doesn’t destroy him if the force of his body hitting the freezing water from such a height hasn’t killed him before the suction does.

He braces himself against the power pulling down at him, his already marred shirt tattered to shreds as he feels the water washing over him. For a brief moment, he realizes that the legends are true — the happiest moments of his life pass before his eyes, laced with some of the most painful scenes he’s lived through — as he feels his hand fails to keep him steadily attached to a structure that’s nothing but busted hopes and broken dreams.

Then, there’s only darkness.

* * *

There’s a crowd on board of the Carpathia when the boat that took Alex in reaches the bigger ship. He looks up with heavy eyes, swollen from all the tears he’s already spilled while alone with his soul albeit surrounded by other rescued people from the Titanic. He doesn’t have the energy to even cry anymore. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to _feel_ ever again.

There are millions of tiny stars lighting up the way back home, a path to a future that’s now uncertain after the tragedy that has just left them all unbalanced.

Michael’s made sure that there’s no future for him even if he’s alive. Alex had never pictured his _ever after_ without Michael, but now he’s faced with the prospect of living the rest of his life without Michael’s warm hand in his, just like Michael himself had promised.

Nothing ever matters to him anymore. Not when he’s lost Michael in the maelstrom that the Titanic had become. Not when the other half of his soul is currently buried in the freezing ocean.

Alex rubs the golden band on his finger absent-mindedly. When he looks around, he finds himself sitting on the lifeboat floor, surrounded by survivors just like him, clothes stained and frayed. He doesn’t have any recollection of how or when they left the Titanic behind. He’s just there. 

What he remembers, though, are the tiny details that have led him to his current predicament. He remembers when Michael showed up, barely a year ago, at their shared apartment in Belfast, where they’ve moved once Michael had secured a contract to help build the biggest ship of all times. He remembers Michael getting down on one knee and promising him the world, if only the world would allow them to actually have a future together. Alex always thought all along that they would never have what any other couple out there has — what Michael’s brother Max and his wife Liz has, what his friends Maria and Kyle managed to achieve after fighting the whole town’s traditions to get their interracial happy ending — but that doesn’t mean Alex doesn’t hope for a different outcome for them.

He doesn’t even protest as he’s helped onto the Carpathia by strong arms. He doesn’t make a sound as he’s bundled up in a blanket and he’s given a loaf of bread. He only shakes his head as his life comes back rushing through his memories, a bunch of good times and happy moments he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel again.

He remembers saying yes to Michael, full of hope and drunk on love, feeding each other cake just like other couple did during their weddings, dancing together to _Musetta’s Waltz_ played in Michael’s apartment by the piers. He remembers them moving onto Southampton. He remembers parading his _boyfriend_ around the piers. He remembers being carefree and young and on top of the world. He remembers believing he had left all the pain behind — all the beatings from his father, all the wounds from a war that wasn’t his to fight, all the scars from growing up different in a town where everyone was a carbon copy of the rest.

“Sir?” he hears, an echo of a stern voice he isn’t ready to face. “ Sir, I need to make sure you’re fine.”

“I’m fine,” he mutters, holding tighter onto the blanket he’s wrapped in. “Just let me be.”

The voice fades into the distance, and Alex is left alone to mourn his loss the way he’s always lived his life — alone, in the shadows, not allowed to _feel_ because of who he chose to love. There are no tears left in him, only resentment and pain.

An ache so deep that’s cutting through his soul with the blinding force of a well-sharped blade.

Alex remains sitting on the dirty floor for what feels like hours, fishing boats trickling by as the Carpathia makes its way to New York in the coldest day of all the Aprils Alex has lived through. He just stares ahead of himself, eyes void of any emotion as he replays his life in slow motion, savoring the nice memories he’s getting to — the lazy mornings in bed, the slow afternoons just staring at the horizon, the long nights stargazing in the desert before they moved halfway across the world. Alex is so engrossed in his grief that he misses the shadow cast over him as the sun hides behind some clouds. He blinks.

“Sir?”

He snaps back at the woman speaking. She’s small, and she’s sporting a huge cut on her forehead, but she’s got kind eyes and a sweet smile despite the circumstances.

“Sir, are you Alex Manes?”

“Yeah, that’s me. How did you know? _Why_ are you looking for me?” he sits up, firing questions as he rearranges the blanket around his shoulders.

“I was told to look for an Alex Manes with a fake leg,” she says uncomfortably, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “It looks like you’re the only one with that,” she keeps on, gesturing at his right leg. He realizes he’s got the prosthesis Michael designed dislodged from his stump, sticking out in a weird angle underneath his wrenched trousers. He attempts half-heartedly to place it correctly, and winces when the material brushes against his swollen stump.

“That doesn’t answer the question about _why_ you were looking for me.”

“I was told to give you this,” she speaks softly, lifting a gold band in between her index finger and her thumb.

Alex blinks at it slowly, realization hitting him square in the chest. He reaches out and takes the ring from the woman’s hand, twisting it in his own fingers. The inscription inside catches the gleam of the dying rays, _M & A_, simple and yet so perfect. The tears he thought he didn’t have anymore spring to life and spill down his cheeks.

“Where did you find it? Where did you find it!” he screams when he doesn’t get a reply. The woman drops her smile and points at a spot on the deck where a new fishing boat has unloaded a bunch of corpses and survivors from the wreckage. Silently, she offers her hand to help him stand up.

With all the energy he has left, Alex grabs the hand offered and gets up, letting go of the blanket before making his way to where some of the Carpathia crew members are already tending to some people. He limps all the way, the fourteen steps that it takes him to reach the survivors in search of the curls that would change his life once again, completely. There’s a young boy sitting underneath another blanket, stained with blood, head bent down and shoulders trembling, as he seems to be crying.

“Michael,” he says frantically, but his voice isn’t above a whisper. “Michael.”

“Can I help you, sir?” a crew member asks him, stopping him dead in his tracks before he starts wading through the ocean of bodies. 

“I’m looking for—I’m looking for my friend,” he stammers. “He’s—he’s tall, and he’s got curly hair and he’s—”

“What’s his name, sir?”

Alex knows what the other man is doing — he wants him to calm down enough so they can check on the list of the dead bodies scattered around the back deck of the Carpathia.

“Michael,” he whispers again, voice too small, too frayed, to even raise an octave. “Michael Guerin.”

“I will check—”

“Alex!” he hears at some point behind the crew member who’s been standing in front of him the whole time. Alex can’t see anything, but he would recognize that voice even half-deaf.

“Michael!” he calls out, trying to get past the crew member.

“Alex?” comes the shaky reply, in a voice Alex thought he’d never hear again.

The other man finally moves, allowing Alex past him in a less than elegant movement, and he can get a glimpse of what it’s like behind the mass of flesh and bones that had been cutting his view. And there, standing shakily under a blanket that’s seen better days, curls damped and stuck to his forehead, held together by sheer stubbornness as he bleeds through a cut on the left side of his neck that looks worse than it should.

But he’s alive, and that’s all that matters to Alex.

He doesn’t care about the witnesses that have now gathered around them as he rushes towards Michael. He doesn’t care about the scene they’re causing as he cries out happy tears while he throws himself into Michael’s arms. He doesn’t care that this might rattle their lives forever.

Their existence has already been shaken enough to last him a lifetime, he doesn’t need to worry about anything else but holding Michael close to his heart.

“Michael,” he repeats like a mantra. “Michael.”

“Hush now, love,” Michael whispers in his ear. “I’m here now.”

“But how—when—I don’t understand—” Alex knows he’s stuttering out words, but he couldn’t care less.

“I had to get back to you, Alex,” Michael tells him, dropping a kiss on his damp hair. “Not even a sinking ship can keep us apart. I promise I will never leave you again.”

“Please don’t. Don’t ever do that again, you self-sacrificing idiot.”

“I promise I won’t throw you over the board of a sinking ship ever again.”

“Do you think this is a time for jokes?”

“Absolutely,” Michael chuckles softly, caressing Alex’s cheek with wet fingers. 

“Now that we have a future,” Alex sighs contentedly, sagging against Michael, “ I don’t care about your jokes anymore.”

Michael laughs along, the world around them dissolving in a swirl of colorless ribbons that only make sense when Alex looks into Michael’s honey-colored eyes. He’s giddy with this newfound happiness, so he does the only thing he can think of.

He kisses Michael. And Michael kisses him back, never minding the hundreds of people gathered around them on board of the Carpathia during a rescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, like they have not a worry in the world.

Like they own their future. Like they’re the kings of their existence.

Like they’re everything cosmic.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun facts & other stuff to help you understand the storyline:
> 
> * Wallace H Hartley was the director of the band at the Titanic. White Star Line wanted to charge his family with the cost of the lost uniform when his body was retrieved after the accident.
> 
> * They’re both around 36 during this fic. Alex fought during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) at 24ish and was sent back home when he lost his leg.


End file.
